As hard as I try, I just can't get used to being jobless. I mean, I should know, right? The fiasco with the Georgia Department of Corruption left me jobless, and I survived. This time around, being jobless was entirely expected; indeed, I looked forward to a bout of relaxation. Unfortunately, I find myself lost without a job title to identify. Try going to a knitting group in swanky Ferndale, Michigan and explaining to self-starting, progressive women that you don't work. Okay, most of them moaned in jealousy, but the point is: I'm a worker! And more importantly: I'm a spender! So. I'm in peril.

Here's the idea, then: minimize life. New tiny house, new tiny budget, new tiny grocery stores, new tiny wardrobe...new tiny existence. How to be without extras. How to think without extemporaneous input. How to program the Tivo. God, I love Tivo. Anyway.

Hey, newsflash! Detroit is suffering from a bit of a depression. I know you're probably shocked, what with it being Mo-Town and all these car companies here, but actually, most of them have dried up and gone south..to Mexico, that is. Detroit is a ghost town. Eerie, actually, driving around streets of abandoned homes, some just burnt remnants of craftsman styled homes built in the era of big cars and bigger gas tanks. It's melancholic and lonely and ever-so poetic, and it would be even more poetic if I didn't know that people, REAL people, have to live in squalor and poverty because of the lack of industry. And I had this naive concept that if more people are living in squalor and poverty, Michigan would be rife with social service agencies. It is not so, my friends. It appears that the problem may very well lie in the fact that so few agencies are funded to combat the problems of Detroit. And I am left with very few options.

Which leads me to the strip clubs. I've already documented how many there are, but I am being led closer to the doors of the The Thrifty Hooker. No, there is no establishment with such a name...YET...perhaps I can remedy that situation.

Does anyone have any 'get rich quick' schemes that work? Even 'get somewhat employed for an average income and pay down your credit card bills' would work. I'll take any suggestions. Really. ANY. Morality is becoming rather flexible as long as the bills pile up....

My favorite read, The Sun, has a section called "Reader's Write", in which normal schmoes get to submit opinions, stories, eulogies, and other fluff to the magazine in hopes of receiving a six month subscription. The Sun gives guidelines for the entries, and the February 1st deadline revolves around guns. Obviously, I didn't have the time to get my entry in, so I am conducting my own "Reader's Write" on my blog. Which is entirely my right.

I have held the heavy handled pit of a Glock 23 (a 'safe-action pistol') in my hands several times. When I was not holding it, I had it strapped to my waist in a security holster. I carried my police-issued handgun with me at all times on the job, and I felt its weight every moment. A .40 caliber weapon with an ability to shoot through water and sand is not a light instrument. The Glock is touted as one of the most reliable, user-friendly weapons on the market. It is assembled in Smyrna, Georgia, just five miles from my previous workplace. It is a matte black weapon with plastic inserts, and one can fully dismantle the weapon into about forty pieces. It fires just as (I imagine) a well-lubricated piston fires--if the user is aware of the rebound on a Glock, and avoids jerking the trigger.

I could never fire a Glock properly. My Glock jammed numerous times, and each time I qualified with my weapon, I would lose shots because of these jams. I would "rack, roll, and rip" the weapon until it fired again. I cleaned my Glock incessantly, because a dirty weapon could become a fatal mistake in combat fire. The cleanliness of my weapon did not contribute to my jams. I was advised of my poor shooting stance, my trigger jerking, my line of sight, my hesitation in squeezing (ever so gently) the trigger back, letting it surprise me with its plume of smoke and BANG! Instructors would remind me to think of the gun as the clutch on a motorcycle--all I had to do was ease the trigger.

Ease the trigger. Be gentle with the trigger. Such a silly way to treat a gun--as though it were a human, capable of emotion, capable of love.

I pulled my Glock from its holster twice while on the job, and each time, between the rush of adrenaline and my cracking voice shouting out orders ("GET DOWN! GET DOWN! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD! STOP NOW!"), I feared that trigger. I feared pulling it (easing it) in towards the palms of my hands, and I feared the acrid smell of gunpowder. I imagined the victim of my fire splitting open with the force of the Glock's firing. A Glock entry wound would be small, but the exit wound would be enormous. The blood and the bones and the guts that could be the consequence of this fairly light, dusty black weapon were perfectly imagined in my mind. The State reminded us to 'shoot until the threat stops', thereby nullifying the humanity of the gunfire victim. How, I would ask myself, can I dehumanize a living person, whether he is evil or not?

Eventually, after I was fired from my position, I came to understand that I was never prepared for the responsibility that accompanied the Glock. I could never have co-existed with it as other law enforcement officers do. I would take it home, leave it in its holster, and stare at it. On my belt, it coiled as a snake, silently making threats to children and 'civilians'. When I wore it on my side, I constantly kept one elbow on the end of the handle, pulling it closer to me, farther away from other potential victims.

I have come to understand somethings about weapons. I do not like them, I do not want them in my world, I do not want my neighbor to have a gun, I do not want the bad guy to have a gun, I do not want to ever lay eyes on a Glock again. But I know that guns will always reside in this culture, and I will not be able to escape them. I can only be relieved that I will never, ever have to pull a Glock out from my holster, stare into someone's eyes, and threaten him with death.

I was so thrilled to hear my favorite home team won the super bowl! Thank goodness for that, because I couldn't watch any of it since I was unloading a truck on the coldest day EVER in Michigan.

Man, it's flippin' cold up here.

Here's a fun idea: try taking 1100 square feet of crap and stuffing it into a 875 square foot house. If that's not your idea of a good Saturday night, then try shopping at a grocery store where you are required to wear 'Uggs' and carry a platinum AmEx card to the meat counter before purchasing your 'Maverick' beef. What the hell? I've entered Yuppie hell.

That being said, I love Royal Oak. While I'm desperately missing my knit group and my friends in Atlanta, I'm totally digging this place. Here's a new concept: talking to strangers! People do that in this town, even when it's thirty below zero. In fact, my new neighbors brought over a tin of cookies as a welcome gift. Who does that? People in Royal Oak, Michigan, that's who.

My house is actually the most adorable thing since Barbie said "Math is hard!" Unfortunately, the sink in the bathroom broke today and there's these unsightly cracks in about half of the windows, and I'm pretty sure our cars have been cased out by neighborhood vandals, but other than that, it's really just precious. Really. Michael has been able to erect his entire MAN THEATER in the tiny living room and was kind enough to leave me one cubic foot for my silk flower arrangement. That's love, people.

The bike, however, refuses to start. The scariest moments of my life? When Michael rode the bike into the Budget rental truck, and when he rode the bike out of the truck. Of course it was scary for me, people. We're talking about my love, my passion, my absolute everything. And my husband was riding it, too.

Hey! I'm gonna start cooking pretty soon, here. After all, I went to the 'market' (we're so swanky we go to market now instead of the grocery store). The market is overridden by hippie love-children who all have these enormously disgusting looking dreadlocks, except the butcher (thank God). The butcher looks like he is in some kind of hell working with these pot-ridden socialists, but it's a job, and he's glad to talk to other normal, bitter individuals like myself. This camaraderie ended shortly after I asked for a pound of turkey burger and admitted half of it was for my cat. I'm sorry. I'm a snob and so is my damned cat.

However, at market (well, now I'm just English, apparently), there is also this scrawny sixteen year old bagger guy who enjoys yelling at morons (like me) who can't figure out how to exit the building, because hippie markets with expensive meat cuts make sure overweight, insecure middle-class women who still wear real leather shoes are put in their perspective places. And how do they do this? Firstly, by placing the exit door in the exact place where an eye will not travel. Secondly, by having this really strict path of how to get around the grocery store. And thirdly, by yelling loudly at the woman going against the flow of traffic: "Hey, ma'am! The exit is THE OTHER WAY!"

Thanks a lot, you underfed vegan. Go to hell.

Anyway, pictures will follow. Thanks, all, for coming around and saying hello. And a special thanks to Sysm for a certain gift that has made life most easy, especially at a certain mom and pop general store.

This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from Nukes524. Make your own badge here.

What I Live By:
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, alwaysâ A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.
-T.S. Eliot
"Little Gidding"